Although this video is a YouTube promo, it is also a telling reminder of the extraordinary journey the site has been on in the last five years.
When it was founded in early 2005, who would have thought that world leaders, rock legends, famous directors, old age pensioners and funny cats would have all used the site as a platform?
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In 1999 Roger Ebert and Martin Scorcese teamed up to discuss their favourite films of the 1990s and the above video shows their top 4 picks.
Ebert’s Top 10 of the 90s were:
Scorsese’s Top 10 of the 90s:
I’m down with a lot of these picks but it is interesting to note that the only films they both selected were Malcolm X, Fargo and Breaking the Waves.
But I guess a lot of people will be thinking ‘where can I buy Horse Thief on DVD’?
The answer is to get a Region 1 version from Amazon US.
Francis Ford Coppola‘s insanely detailed notebook for The Godfather is revealing of his passion for the project and maybe a key reason the final film turned out so well.
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I’m amazed by how many times people still ask me about the ‘black bars’ when films are shown on TV, or when UK channels like ITV and Five show films cropped from their original aspect ratio.
The above video uses a scene from Die Hard to explain why maintaining the original look of a film is important.
An interesting and lengthy interview with James Cameron for a special online edition of KCRW’s The Treatment, recorded live at a benefit for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
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An interesting radio interview with composer Bernard Herrmann, who famously scored Citizen Kane, Psycho and Taxi Driver amongst other films.
He makes some interesting comments about the nature of film music and the differences in working with Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles.
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Some wise words from Alfred Hitchcock on the art of film editing with special reference to Psycho (1960)
> Find out more about film editing at Wikipedia
> Buy Psycho on DVD from Amazon UK
Legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis talks about his landmark work on The Godfather films.
Back in October 1996 Steve Jobs and John Lasseter went on The Charlie Rose Show to discuss Pixar and the future of animated film.
A little bit of background: Jobs bought the animation division of ILM from George Lucas in 1986, renamed it Pixar and in 1995 their first feature length movie Toy Story began an incredible run of acclaimed animated blockbusters; Lasseter was the creative chief who directed A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999) and Cars (2006) whilst also serving as executive producer on Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo(2003) and The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007) and WALL-E (2008).
The interview is fascinating in retrospect because it was only a few months before Jobs returned to Apple (the computer company he had co-founded in 1976) and began the great renaissance that gave the world the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone.
Just a decade after the following interview was recorded, Pixar was bought by Disney in early 2006 for $7.4 billion – Jobs became the largest individual shareholder and Lasseter was appointed Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Feature Animation.
Watch it in full below:
The BBC series The Virtual Revolution aired on BBC2 over the last four weeks and explored the past, present and future of the world wide web.
If you are in the UK, you can watch all four episodes on iPlayer at the links below:
The inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee was interviewed for the series and in a neat touch the BBC has made available the raw interviews (or ‘rushes’ in film and TV speak) on their website.
Here is some of the interview which covers how people think when using the web; the ‘spirit of the web’; the impact of the web on nation states and web censorship.
Presenter Aleks Krotoski has also compiled a Flickr album of photos from filming the series:
An interesting infographic about the Oscars from Business Pundit.
[Via /Film]
The New York Times recently asked a bunch of high profile actors (including Sandra Bullock, Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson and George Clooney) to discuss their favourite performances of the last decade.
I’m surprised at the general timidity of the choices (Eddie Murphy?!) but three I’d totally agree with are Woody Harrelson on Ulrich Mühe (The Lives of Others), Vera Farmiga on Michael Fassbender (Hunger) and Zoe Saldana on Tang Wei (Lust, Caution).
Here’s a few I’d say were amongst the best performances of the last ten years:
I’m sure there are more, but I’m still amazed that no-one mentioned Daniel Day Lewis.
Film critic Roger Ebert was profiled recently in a terrific Esquire piece by Chris Jones.
It details how he has coped with cancer over the last few years and how it has – paradoxically – led to an explosion of writing on his blog.
Some of the highlights include:
His enjoyment of watching a screening of Broken Embraces:
It’s a quirky, complex, beautiful little film, and Ebert loves it. He radiates kid joy. Throughout the screening, he takes excited notes — references to other movies, snatches of dialogue, meditations on Almodóvar’s symbolism and his use of the color red. Ebert scribbles constantly, his pen digging into page after page, and then he tears the pages out of his notebook and drops them to the floor around him.
How his hands now do the talking, after losing his lower jaw and the ability to speak:
Now his hands do the talking. They are delicate, long-fingered, wrapped in skin as thin and translucent as silk. He wears his wedding ring on the middle finger of his left hand; he’s lost so much weight since he and Chaz were married in 1992 that it won’t stay where it belongs, especially now that his hands are so busy. There is almost always a pen in one and a spiral notebook or a pad of Post-it notes in the other — unless he’s at home, in which case his fingers are feverishly banging the keys of his MacBook Pro.
His narrow brush with death when his cancer resurfaced in 2006:
In 2006, the cancer surfaced yet again, this time in his jaw. A section of his lower jaw was removed; Ebert listened to Leonard Cohen. Two weeks later, he was in his hospital room packing his bags, the doctors and nurses paying one last visit, listening to a few last songs. That’s when his carotid artery, invisibly damaged by the earlier radiation and the most recent jaw surgery, burst. Blood began pouring out of Ebert’s mouth and formed a great pool on the polished floor. The doctors and nurses leapt up to stop the bleeding and barely saved his life. Had he made it out of his hospital room and been on his way home — had his artery waited just a few more songs to burst — Ebert would have bled to death on Lake Shore Drive.
How his online journal started in 2008:
At first, it’s just a vessel for him to apologize to his fans for not being downstate. The original entries are short updates about his life and health and a few of his heart’s wishes. Postcards and pebbles. They’re followed by a smattering of Welcomes to Cyberspace. But slowly the journal picks up steam, as Ebert’s strength and confidence and audience grow. You are the readers I have dreamed of, he writes. He is emboldened. He begins to write about more than movies; in fact, it sometimes seems as though he’d rather write about anything other than movies. The existence of an afterlife, the beauty of a full bookshelf, his liberalism and atheism and alcoholism, the health-care debate, Darwin, memories of departed friends and fights won and lost — more than five hundred thousand words of inner monologue have poured out of him, five hundred thousand words that probably wouldn’t exist had he kept his other voice.
How writing is ‘saving’ him:
He calls up a journal entry to elaborate, because it’s more efficient and time is precious: “When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be”.
It is a powerful portrait filled with sadness at his condition and yet one can only admire Roger’s dedication to his craft.
In the midst of a terrible illness he is still being sustained by doing the thing he loves. A lesson for us all.
Read the profile in full here and check out his journal here.
This short film by Adam Curtis recently aired on Newswipe with Charlie Brooker and puts forward the argument that we are all becoming like Richard Nixon.
The crop dusting sequence from Hitchcock’s North By Northwest is one of the most iconic in all of cinema and the real life location can be seen above on Google Maps.
The scene was meant to take place in northern Indiana, but was actually shot on Garces Highway (155) near the towns of Wasco and Delano, north of Bakersfield in Kern County, California.
If you have never seen the film, here it is:
Incidentally, the Blu-ray of North By Northwest which Warner Bros brought out last year is easily one of the finest to come out in the new format.
Read my full take on it here.
[Thanks to Jeffrey Wells for pointing out the location in a recent post on Hollywood Elsewhere]
This is footage of Sam Neill doing a screen test for the role of James Bond with Fiona Fullerton back in the mid-80s.
It was for The Living Daylights (1987), although the scene is actually from From Russia With Love.
Current Bond Daniel Craig told me back in 2006 that the Bond producers always make potential 007s audition with this scene.
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Charlie Rose recently had a discussion about the Apple iPad on his show recently with Walt Mossberg of the WSJ, David Carr of the NYT and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch.
Several good points are made, which makes a change from the complaints about it being a big iPhone and having no Flash (the latter hasn’t affected sales of the iPhone and iPod touch has it?).
Whilst I don’t think it will change how people watch long form films or TV (there’s still cinemas and large TVs for that) my gut feeling is that that it will revolutionise how we casually browse and experience the web.
When it comes to newspapers, magazines and regular content that we read, like RSS feeds, blogs and shorter form media, I think advanced touch tablets are the future.
It could be the iPad, the Google’s upcoming device (which apparently launches this autumn), or succeeding versions, but after years of desktops and laptops sticking to the same keyboard and operating systems, this feels like a new era.
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James Cameron’s Avatar is currently dominating the world wide box office and one of the stand out features is the visual effects.
Here are some behind the scenes videos which explain how they were created.
2012 was the cheesy, expensive disaster movie that came out last year (and has since been a huge international hit) but if you ever wondered how the visual effects wizards created the end of the world so convincingly, then check out these videos.
Jeffrey Blitz is the director of Spellbound (2002), Rocket Science (2007) and the upcoming documentary Lucky, which screens at the Sundance film festival later this month.
Whilst filming Dr Strangelove Peter Sellars did this press interview on the phone with a US outlet and demonstrated his incredible mastery of British accents.
This Christmas BBC Four are showing a season of programmes and films dedicated to Orson Welles.
The UK channel will be showing five of his films, a BBC series from the 1950s, the famous 1982 Arena documentary and a new programme about his later career in Europe presented by his biographer Simon Callow.
Given that BBC Four is probably my favourite TV channel and Welles is one of my favourite filmmakers, this is a time to get the DVR ready.
The schedule breaks down like this:
The Orson Welles Sketchbook: This was a series of programmes by Welles originally broadcast on the BBC in 1955. Produced by Huw Wheldon, they involve Welles telling anecdotes about his life and career such as the infamous radio version of The War of the Worlds and his ground breaking theatre productions. [BBC Four / Friday 18th December at 19.30-19.45pm, Wednesday 23rd December 00:10-00:25, Thursday 24th December at 19.00-19:15, Saturday 26th December at 19.00 & Monday 28th Dec at 01.30am]
Citizen Kane (Dir. Orson Welles, 1941): Although burdened by the tag of ‘The Greatest Film Ever Made’, Welles’ debut is still an astonishingly vibrant piece of cinema that examines the life of a newspaper magnate in a series of flashbacks.
Loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, it set new standards by synthesising a raft of techniques with its use of deep focus, low angles and dazzling screenplay. Repeated viewings only confirm its ridiculous brilliance. [BBC Four / Friday 25th December at 7pm]
Arena: The Orson Welles Story: This classic two-part profile of Welles which was originally shown on the BBC in 1982. Examining his life and career in some depth, the contributors include John Huston, Robert Wise, Peter Bogdanovich, Charlton Heston, Jeanne Moreau and lengthy contributions from Welles himself. [BBC Four / Part 1 screens on Friday 25th December at 21.00 and Part 2 is on Sunday 27th at 23.00]
Journey Into Fear (Dir. Norman Foster, 1943): Adapted from the Eric Ambler novel, this tale of espionage in Istanbul during World War II this doesn’t have the same status as Kane or Ambersons.
However, Welles co-wrote the script with co-star Joseph Cotten and oversaw the production with fellow Mercury Theatre colleague Norman Foster, who was credited as director. [BBC Four / Friday 25th December, 22:50-00:00]
The Third Man (Dir. Carol Reed, 1949): One of the indisutable classics of cinema is this adaptation of Graham Greene’s story set in post-WW2 Vienna where American writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) is invited by his old friend Harry Lime (Welles) only to discover he has died. Or has he?
Co-starring Allida Valli, Trevor Howard and Bernard Lee, it features a marvellous score by Anton Karras. [Saturday 26th December at 19.15-21:00]
The Magnificent Ambersons (Dir. Orson Welles, 1943): The follow up to Kane was a period drama based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, which told the story of the Ambersons, an upper-class Indianapolis family.
Brilliant in many respects, it became infamous for the studio re-editing the film whilst Welles was absent, which makes a possible re-release tantalising if the original footage can be found. [BBC Four / Sunday 27th December, 20.00-21:30]
Orson Welles Over Europe: Actor and Welles biographer Simon Callow explores Welles’ self-imposed exile in Europe in this new documentary. After alienating Hollywood, he became involved in all manner of film, theatre and television projects. [BBC Four / Sunday, Dec. 27, 21.30-22:30 (repeated at 1.45am)
The Stranger (Dir. Orson Welles, 1946): A thriller about a federal agent who has to track down an escaped Nazi war criminal, this stars Welles alongside Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young.
Although a chunk of it is missing (perhaps destroyed) and Welles wasn’t happy with the end result, it is still an intriguing film. [BBC Four / Sunday 27th December at 23.55-1:30am]
> Find out more about Orson Welles at Wikipedia
> BBC Four
> Listen to the infamous Welles frozen peas advert
The original trailer for North By Northwest (out recently on Blu-ray) was introduced by Alfred Hitchcock and done in the manner of a travel show.
Can you imagine directors today being this funny?
The Hollywood Reporter recently compiled a list of the biggest flops of the decade and the ‘winner’ was The Adventures of Pluto Nash.
This is the kind of project that gives studio executives night sweats just by thinking about it.
It was a 2002 comedy directed by Ron Underwood (who since seems to have done mostly TV) starring Eddie Murphy as the owner of a ‘lunar nightclub’.
Made for an estimated cost of $100 million it ended up grossing $4.4 million in the US. Its total worldwide gross was about $7.1 million. Ouch.
It is so bad that you can’t even find a trailer for it on YouTube. Instead check out this German TV promo.
Although Murphy has had his fair share of box office misfires across the decade (Meet Dave, Imagine That) it should be noted he still has a decent box office track record (Shrek, Norbit, Dr Dolittle, Daddy Day Care) – even if the films are cack.
The other flops on the list are Battlefield Earth, Land of the Lost, Gigli, Town and Country, Catwoman, The Invasion, Rollerball (the 2002 remake), Grindhouse and The Spirit.
This is an MGM promotional film made in the mid-60s about a young Sharon Tate, who was then appearing in Eye of the Devil (1966).
Look out for: a young David Hemmings dancing like Austin Powers; producer John Calley; the ‘Guinness discotheques’ (whatever they were); the hilarious tone of the narrator and the bit where David Niven calls Sharon a ‘fabulously good looking bird’. Feminism clearly hadn’t quite caught on yet.
A year after this was released she would marry Roman Polanski and in the summer of 1969 she was killed by the crazed followers of Charles Manson.
A behind the scenes look at the upcoming James Cameron film Avatar.
Animator Nick Park gives a 20 minute interview on Wallace and Gromit.
Author Maurice Sendak and director Spike Jonze discuss the upcoming adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are which opens in UK cinemas on Friday 11th December.
A friend of mine once told me that he always likes it in a film when the title is used as a line of dialogue.
He’s going to love the above compilation.
[Link via Thompson on Hollywood]
The Road to the Wall was 1962 short documentary film about the construction of The Berlin Wall produced by Robert Saudek and narrated by James Cagney.
It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short and like a lot of US government films of the era, has a distinct reds-under-the-bed tone.
An short film made in 1962 by the United States Information Agency about the erection of the Berlin Wall.
It clearly bears the hallmarks of the era (notice how it has the pace and feel of a horror film), but it is an interesting snapshot of the time.
Above is a lengthy and highly informative C-SPAN interview with Ken Auletta of The New Yorker about his new book on Google, which is called Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.
Here are some quotes and facts raised that particularly struck me:
Anyway, the whole thing is worth watching.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Author Jon Krakauer is the US author who wrote the book Into the Wild, which was adapted into the 2007 film directed by Sean Penn.
In the above interview on Meet The Press he discusses his new book Where Men Win Glory, which examines the extraordinary story of Pat Tillman.
He was the US football player who gave up a highly lucrative career in order to join the US army after 9/11 and was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan during 2004.
The circumstances surrounding his death have been controversial to say the least and the current commander of US troops in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, also has an interesting role in the whole affair which raises uncomfortable questions for him and President Obama.
I wonder if Sean Penn is interested in making this book into a film?
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s director Alex Cox presented a series of cult films on BBC2 called Moviedrome.
It started in 1988 with The Wicker Man and the above video is his introduction to the film.
Video of The Coen Brothers from 2007 discussing how they edit their movies with none other than their former DP Barry Sonnenfeld.
Robert Elswit is one of the finest cinematographers working today who has shot films such as Good Night and Good Luck, There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton.
This 30 minute video is an interview he did at Principia College with his wife Helen, a visual effects producer who has worked on films such as The Perfect Storm and Master and Commander.
What the Trend is a useful website that tracks what’s trending on Twitter and why.
For each trend, it gives you a quick explanation of why a #tag is trending (the blurbs are edited by users) and you can see the latest tweets and related Flickr photos and news stories.
* You can follow me on Twitter here (@filmdetail) *
A recent research study, called Moviegoers: 2010, was conducted by the marketing firm Stradella Road and focused on the habits of frequent filmgoers.
The actual field research was done by Nielsen’s National Research Group (NRG) and focused on frequent US filmgoers, which is those who see 6 or more films a year.
‘Frequent filmgoers’ are important as they buy an estimated %85 of the all cinema tickets purchased each year.
The stats below are interesting and to read a more detailed post on the report, check out the excellent MarqueeStars blog.
To download the full study as a PDF click here.
Errol Morris talks about his classic documentary The Thin Blue Line.